I shake my head. “No, not order someone to die…did you ever kill anyone yourself?”
Her one eye stares at me like I’ve asked her a question in another language. The silence is its own answer. She’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, maybe thousands, but she commanded other people to do the dirty work.
She’s never taken a life.
Her hands have always stayed clean.
Yong died right in front of me, staring at me with accusing eyes. He died crying for a mother who never existed. Maybe it was just a playground fight to him. Maybe he was just being a bully. Maybe he didn’t understand who he was attacking, and that ignorance cost him his life.
I killed him. His blood was on my hands. It was on my shirt. It was all over me.
Unlike Matilda, I know what it feels like to take a life, to see the look of intelligence wiped away, to know that I have forever ended a person.
Bishop glares at me, shakes his head in disapproval. “Em, don’t listen to this thing. Give me the order.”
It would be so easy to do that. Matilda is my enemy, and I want her dead, want it so badly….
No. That’s what she would do, this creature that I could become, that in some ways I already have become. If I make the wrong choices, I could follow her path.
I know what it means to kill.
Even though she is far older, she does not.
And that knowledge, I hope, is the thing that will let me be different.
I shake my head.
“We still need her,” I say.
Bishop’s eyes narrow. I’m not sure he believes me. Maybe he’s judging me because I can’t do what needs to be done. If so, he has every right—the leader has to make the hard decisions.
I take a deep breath, try to calm myself. I enter the shuttle.
As the twins said, to my right is a closed metal door. It has rounded edges and a wheel in the middle. I haven’t seen a door like this before. I walk to it. There is no handle. I try the wheel: it won’t budge.
At the wheel’s hub is a circular plaque. In the middle of it, a golden gear.
I quickly go back the other way. The short corridor leads me to a low-ceilinged room.
When I enter, I see that El-Saffani was right.
Gaston and Spingate stand in a wide central aisle. On either side of them, long rows of plain white coffins, the same kind the pigs opened to eat the skeletons inside.
Aisles also line the outside of the room. There is so much space in here, space for people to sit, or walk, or lie down, or play, or whatever anyone wants to do. We don’t need to actually use the coffins; there is enough room for all of us without getting in them.
I return to the platform. At the base of the ramp, my people are waiting: the circle-stars, the kids, O’Malley and the others. They have been through so much, even the children who have only been awake for a handful of hours.
I wave them in, point toward the coffin room.
“Get in here, fast. Find space and sit down while we get the shuttle going.”
They filter past me. Can we get the shuttle going? I don’t know. It isn’t from a lack of memory or a muddy mind—I have no idea how this thing works, and I know Matilda has no idea, either.
The kids are dirtier now, grease and grass stains on their clothes. As for those who are my age, their shirts are torn, streaked with dust and blood. They carry clubs of bone. They have fought to get here, faced down nightmares to earn this moment.
Then I see that girl, Zubiri, the tooth-girl with the dark skin. She walks to me. Her eyes are round, terrified discs.
“Em, are we going to die?”
“No, honey,” I say. “It will be all right. I have to show you something scary, but I’ll be right by your side, so don’t be afraid.”
I take her by the hand. I push down my revulsion at the thought of all those coffins, and I lead her to the room.
My people spread out. They wander around. They collapse in the aisles. To my horror and amazement, most of the children crawl into coffins and lie down. People are everywhere—the circles, circle-stars, circle-crosses, the tooths and the double-rings. Every last one of them is exhausted. They have given everything they have to give, and now, hopefully, their efforts are at an end.
Aramovsky is sitting on the floor of an outer aisle, his back against the red-carpeted wall. He isn’t looking at anything. He’s just staring. His shirt is bloody, torn and—finally—wrinkled. At last he looks like one of us, but is he? He stabbed his progenitor, drove the spear into the ancient Aramovsky’s leg. If our Aramovsky hadn’t done that, would the two of them have already been gone by the time Bishop ripped through the thicket? Our Aramovsky does not look well. Once we make it to Omeyocan, I’ll have to keep an eye on him. If he needs help, I will help him.
Zubiri tugs on my hand. “What’s scary, Em?”
I point to the coffins.
She laughs. “Oh, those? Those are beds.”